International Perspectives on Information Systems

A Social and Organisational Dimension

Savvas Katsikdes, Graham Orange

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138319233
• eBook ISBN: 9780429843921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this book addresses the increasingly important social and organisational issues of information systems development both at the operational level and within a wider social context. Reflecting the environmental issues surrounding the development of information systems and the implementation of information technology. This book is aimed at supporting information systems courses incorporating a behavioural element or sociology courses with an information systems content.

Part I
Sociatechnical Perspective

1 Organising Technology: Prerequisites of Technology as an Agent of Social Change

JOSEF HOCHGERNER
CENTRE FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION,
VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Abstract

In a time when technical artefacts are of obviously great societal importance, it is a much discussed problem as to whether technological development is following a determined and dominant path, and, whether or not in the process of technical and social change comparable models are perceptible (cf. Katsikides/S., M. Campbell/J, Hochgerner/S., 1994). In such investigations it is not a question of comparing two separate spheres (one social, the other technical). Instead, the approach to socio-technical analysis brings about the issue how, and under which conditions technical objects and inanimate objects can become factors of the social world - more precisely: of social interaction. In order to find answers supporting the argument of continued development one needs a concept which is similar in approach to F. Braudel's (1979: 18) when he explored the "possibilities of a pre-industrialised world". For our purpose - to understand the possible development of nowadays industrialised/mechanised world - one has to base the sociological foundations from which emerge the technical machines in sound working order and which - then, once applied - seem "absolutely necessary".

"Mechanisation takes command"?

S. Giedion (1948) provided lots of facts to foster this, his famous statement. In this article I will not argue against this proposition, yet I will ask for the societal background and for sociologically eminent reasons why mechanisation got and incessantly possesses this relevance. In which way, using terms and theoretical concepts can the mechanisation of the world be appropriately characterised and investigated? Besides, new models for interpreting technology, new theoretical components of sociological analysis and explanation are becoming required. Complementary reformulating requirements come to light in the area of sociological self-perception: Fruitful sociological investigation into technology is not possible without overcoming handed down sociological barriers. There is more to the sociological investigation into technical development than merely generalising the relationship between human subjects and material objects. An individualistic consideration of humans and machines allows no sociological conception. In this direct polarity, every indication of social ordering and forms of inter-human relationships is lacking. For social scientific research into technology, new entries have to be opened. This should help to understand the functioning of technical systems within society. This implies to refrain from the two-way separation of "technical" systems on the one hand and "social" systems on the other. Instead analysing the implementation, organisation and dynamics of "socio-technical systems" are to be placed in the limelight.

In socio-technical systems, technical and social elements are undeniably connected. Following this principle, in the socio-technical system of traffic for example, pure technical solutions strictly lead to undesired consequences whilst proposals for changing basic social conditions (disregarding technical elements) of the traffic system usually appear as "technically impractical" speculation.

If then 'technology" cannot be investigated alone, what should the focus of sociological analysis of "socio-technical systems" be? It appears to be necessary to understand technology as something changeable within the equally transforming societal processes. Thus, a dynamic term for "technology" has to be placed at the centre of socio-technical analysis.

A dilemma comes to light similar to that stated by N. Elias (1987) regarding the formulation of the very question of sociology: It is not a matter of the opposition or sociologically determined difference between "individual" and "society". Both exist within each other. Every society is composed of individuals who, from their point of view, cannot exist as social beings without society. Hence Elias talks consequently of "the individual's society". Following along the same vein, in the sociology of technology the presumed and often enforced difference between technology and society is not compromised. To a certain extent, the social aspect is dependent on technology whilst from the opposite angle the technical aspect cannot be separated from its social components. As a consequence, it cannot be an issue of "technology and society" but rather an investigation into the technology of the society.

In the analysis of socio-technical systems, the term "mechanisation" comes closest to smoothing the way for the investigation of a special sociology of technology. It relates to social acting: It characterises the transference of an individual social action - in certain cases only from sequences of acting, in others from related series of actions - upon technical structures which are being ever extended in industrial societies of today. It is precisely this a culturally created objectivation of laid down social contexts in concretised or abstract structural components of these systems.

The structural components can thus become dominant. Observation of machines and appliances in a narrower sense provides data and grounds for empirical measurement of "grades of mechanisation". The current grades of mechanisation can be seen as indicators in which way and to what extent a society has made itself dependent on technical systems and processes.

The concept of the mechanisation of socio-cultural elements offers an explanation for certain social processes, although the question as to exactly how and why remains open. In a fragile social world, how does the situation arise that in social interactions complicated, numerously interlinked processes constantly recreate stable development trends, are able to consolidate and even gain long term dominance?

An approach is the concept of "formative principles" (J. Hochgerner, 1986). Having grown with history and standing strong in the industrially developed societies, the principles of "hierarchy", "objectification", and "growth" are at the heart of this theoretical framework. However these are not signs pretending to show the direction in which development will take, nor do they describe normative expectations referring to the historic dynamics of civilisation processes. Rather, they represent a practical implementation and, in large social systems, a specifically related further development of the microsociological term "figuration" (N. Elias, 1978: p. 142). Included in this are "transformation models" in which people act, according to the situation, "not only using their intellect, but also with their complete body, and every action in their relationship to each other".

Hierarchy, objectification, and growth are termed "formative" because they respectively bundle up a range of material and idealistic elements together with organising social facts (laws, customs and traditions, role expectations etc.) in such a way that the societal formation which is supported by this is in fact secured by their existence. This security of continued existence incorporates remodelling and possible change (throughout the society as well as even concerning its formative principles). For societies such as the industrially developed which recognise "growth" as a constitutive necessity, constant change even guarantees preservation: Such a societal formation can only have continued existence if it is in the position to remodel itself in a controlled way to incessant change. Such regulation, which controls human behaviour according to the specific needs of a certain given social formation, is termed a "formative principle". It organises existence and change in social behaviour over several historical eras without itself being connected to the respective form of that time.

Should technologies and elements of social acting merge into socio-technical systems, the technical components would be "moulded" according to the societally dominating principles. These moulding principles - in tracing the ideas of F. Braudel - provide "the societal foundations" from which the dynamics of mechanisation are determined and socio-technical systems gain structure and function. Whilst technology acts as an organising body within these systems and the organisation of social relationships changes itself due to the influence of the mechanisation, a "social organisation of technology" takes place.

The social shaping of technology and levels of mechanisation within a certain society cannot be derived by analysis of technological characteristics (performance, function, its composition and construction). It is not only individual innovations which cumulatively constitute technical progress, or to be more blunt determine social transformation. The moulding principles are responsible for "organising" existing and new technologies together with social, material and non-material norms or rules. Only in this form is technology effective as an agent of change in the most different applications in socio-techmcal systems.

Behind technical concepts for the solution of certain problems stand societally defined forms of awareness of concrete problems, as well as socio-culturally moulded presumptions about what the solution could in fact be. In this sense investigation has to follow the line of establishing how the moulding principles of hierarchy, objectification and growth manifest themselves in concrete technologies. Using new trends in the high-tech area, this can be observed. In this way, information and communication technologies as well as processes and concepts of biotechnology play a prominent role. The starting point is created by the question how technological transformation works in the development of specialised technical fields and whether or not societally moulding principles do in fact paradigmatically have their own part to play.

Transforming basic modes of technological progress - examples and patterns

Simply listing "old" and "new" specialised fields would be inadequate to explain the existence of a "technological transformation". Alongside traditional fields such as "mechanical engineering" and "civil engineering" exist completely new areas like "biotechnology, "nuclear physics" or "software engineering". The typologistically important changes only become evident when the internal dynamics within the "old" and "new" specialised fields are compared.

Such comparisons are possible at several levels. When making comparisons between traditional and new technical specialised fields, the most striking element is the subordination in the relevance of material substrata: Both technological work itself and its products were and are linked to circumstantial manifestations in mechanical engineering, mechanical technologies, civil engineering and similar technological specialised fields. In as far as the newer information and communication technologies, genetic engineering, informatics and artificial intelligence are concerned, manifestations of that kind play a lesser role. Immaterial performance and function frequently take the place of material products. Both the tactile experience of technical work as much as the perception of results tend to point from an originally rather concrete to an increasingly abstract "pole". On the greater scale of the practical economic application of these differently funded technologies corresponds to the trend of the transition from the traditional heavy industry to "meta-industry" (W. Wobbe, 1986).

A further differentiation between the specialised areas emerges when one considers the development of those technical processes, which come about in a typical way. A visual comparison of a gear wheel and the micro processor clearly accentuates this difference. Clearly both are applicable in different technical systems; whilst the function parameters of the gear wheel remains the same - because they are set out - the microchip can not only calculate in a more varied way with different inputs, it can also produce manifold outputs with corresponding diverse programmes. The more traditional technical specialised fields are characterised by the fact that the greater part of its processes run relatively rigidly and mechanically (sequential and consecutive). The newer technological applications however are to a much greater extent more complex and variable, and to some extent "autonomous" in their operation.

Within this transformation of the specialised technical areas, a shift from rather materially concrete, process oriented rigid technologies occurs towards rather immaterially, abstract technologies, having a much more complex and variable appearance.

However it is not possible to place the individual specialised areas exactly on a scale. This is a fundamental impossibility not merely a question of lacking data. Yet in the first approach, three groups of specialised technical areas can be differentiated as being more or less "traditional" or "advanced".

Belonging to the first group are all simple mechanical technologies, also assembled mechanical processing technologies, civil engineering and architecture, mechanical engineering, material science and diverse processes of exploiting materials. All of these branches indicate a relationship to material products and concrete production methods. For the most part they represent that classically encapsulated idea understood in the term "technical", and whose image is fostered by numerous "typical" technical professions. Architects and civil engineers, toolmakers, lock smiths, iron and steel workers and mechanical engineers in all specialist and professional areas constitute the central - formerly clear - job outlines of these dominant "mechanical specialised fields of technology".

Recently these images have changed. Whilst the self concepts of architects are being damaged by "mechanic" formalisation (which restricts creative freedom in material structures), technical advances are beginning to distinguish between abstract means of work and immaterial products. New construction, prospection and production technologies are merging from these at one time so graspable "real" fields of work into the system structures of the new "information and communication technologies". They are progressively assuming their operational characteristics and form.

In the nineteenth century when industrialisation was fully underway, electronic and chemical engineering, associated material sciences (from metal to artificial), as well as the natural scientific technical subjects assumed the deviant form of mechanic field. They laid the foundations for the so called "science based industries" and developed specific qualification demands for the engineers: Those being of relatively higher abstractness of working methods and processes encouraging school and university education. The role of science in being the impulse provider for technical and industrial development was exited from this specialised field. This second group is characterised in such a way that more emphasis is increasingly placed on research and development than on experience. Here, in this somewhat transitory area, the main issue is "specialised fields based on scientific knowledge and research".

The third group of specialised technical fields pushes the notion of basic scientific support and extension even further. Technology now gradually takes on a shape which relies very little on the existence and functioning of traditionally operating mechanical components. Paradigmatically stated, the inherited forms of "mechanic" technology can be compared with the most advanced fields, that is the so called "cerebral technologies". Included in this term are software technologies, as well as biotechnological processes as long as they exhibit elements of artificial intelligence (e. g. "open-access" machines and other automatic apparatus or processes with the ability to leam). Proximity, on the technical level, to the way in which the brain functions provides the precondition for achieving a kind of co-evolution of consciousness and machines (cf. J. C. Glenn, 1989, H. Moravec, 1993). Cerebral technologies are characterised by a dominantly immaterial character of their measurable components just as much as the operation produced. The "sphere of possibilities" - both in implementation as well in the intended and unintended consequences - greatly surpasses the corresponding extent of traditional machines, constructions and material processing. In this way the emerging technologies of this kind are facing a specialised, completely new challenge. This can be seen particularly in the trend towards determined abstractness of the course of events, which increasingly excludes judgement by - biologically and culturally - acquired s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• The Editors
• PART I: SOCIOTECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE
• PART II: ORGANISATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
• PART III: USER PARTICIPATION